Bad Thoughts
September 17, 2006
Oh, Lord ...
I'm at the airport now. I just checked in. And ... and ... and ...
There were no more aisle seats left on the plane.
Please. Let that sink in:
No.
More.
Aisle.
Seats.
I swear I chose my seats when I made my reservation. I always do! And I always get an aisle seat.
Here is the deal:
When you are 6'3, you can't sit in the center of a row. Your legs won't go all the way down behind the seat in front of you. It's a matter of physics.
If the Universe were organized according to different principles, my legs could occupy the same space as the posterior of the person sitting in front of me. But this is not how things work. If I don't have the aisle, I have to sit with my legs bent and knees resting halfway up against the seat in front of me. And then when the clueless soul up there lurches back suddenly, I can't walk right for the next few weeks.
This is pretty bad.
I wanted to yell at the woman at the Alitalia desk who gave me the non-aisle seat, but I decided not to do it. She was already the ugliest woman that I had ever seen -- so ugly that she obviously had had to flee Italy, land of the beautiful people, and come to Newark, New Jersey -- and I didn't want to make her life any harder on her.
But I could have.
I would have taken a photo of her but -- you know -- that's not allowed in airports anymore.
Man ...
The people sitting on either side of me on this flight are going to hate me. I already have to use the bathroom during the flight and I haven't even boarded yet! Also, I brought a bunch of sexy/violent DVDs to watch on the flight that they won't want their kids to see. Heh. Sometimes I wish that I did not try so hard to be a good person. Otherwise, quite a scene would be breaking out on this flight.
I keep telling myself:
It's only eight hours. Eight hours of sitting in what amounts to a "baby seat" in an up-right fetal position with strangers leaning into me and/or drooling on my shoulder and/or speaking to me all night. Things could be worse ... I can't imagine what could be worse right now, but certainly, there is something.
The good news is that I'll be eating pizza at my secret pizza place at the Milano Malpensa airport tomorrow for lunch and that I will be having a fabulous dinner somewhere outside in the last of the Italian summer in Rome tomorrow.
And then, Monday, the train ride to Naples.
And I'm riding in the first-class compartment on the Eurostar "high-speed" train all the way there.
Seriously. It will be worth the extra money.
After the ordeal ahead of me, I'm going to deserve it.